Jasper Johns is an American artist whose versatile work is mainly made up of painting, but also of plastic, stage sets and costumes.
Jasper Johns is considered one of the important pioneers ofPop Art , although his visual work is not only attributed to this style by art scientists; John's works are often to abstract expressionism or neo-dada .
Jasper Johns celebrated his 85th birthday on May 15, 2015, he had had around eight decades of artistic work on this date and had been a multiple millionaire through his art for around four decades.
In a single auction (November auction in Sotheby in 2004), Jasper John's "Green Target" from 1956 from 1956 brought $ 3,368,000 million, the "Flag" from 1971 from 1971 $ 4,488,000 and the number "0 Through 9" from 1961 $ 10,928,000 for three works, not many Artist.
In the art portal artfacts.net , which orders the success of the artists of our world according to exhibitions and sales, Jasper Johns is currently ranked 57. He is one of the 100 most famous artists in the world, in the 2000s he even made it up to the 30s.
Jasper John's "Flag", encaustic, oil paint on canvas, hung in Plywood (USA), 1954-55
An artist who makes art lovers curious, not only on his work, but also on a life path that leads to such successes:
Jasper Johns: childhood, youth and private life
Jasper Johns was born on May 15, 1930 in Augusta in the US state of Georgia, so to speak, in the heart of the southern United States.
His parents were Jean Riley and William Jasper Johns. William Jasper Johns passed on his son Jasper (whom he himself had in honor of William Jasper, a Sergeant in the American War of Independence), which is why the artist is sometimes referred to as Jasper Johns Jr.
Because his parents' marriage failed after a short time, Johns grew up with his grandparents in Allendale, South Carolina in his early years. Afterwards he lived with his mother in Columbia, South Carolina, then a few years with his aunt in Lake Murray, South Carolina, a typical hiking fate of some divorce children. In 1947 Johns completed the Edmunds High School in Sumter, South Carolina, where he was lived with his mother again.
The little jasper is said to have started drawing early in early age, on its own, neither parents nor grandparents brought the child Jasper into contact with any form of art. Johns later expressed this period of his life: "In the places I was a child, there were no artists and no art, I didn't know what art meant at all."
Jasper John's “Flag” - detailed view
At that time Johns continues: "I think I thought art was something that would put me in a different situation than the one I was in" ; It has not been handed down
In any case, Johns found art through his surroundings through his environment, and he thus demonstrated the right instinct, as is shown in the paragraph "Jasper John's artistic training".
From 1954, i.e. since the beginning of his artistic career, Johns lived in a relationship with Robert Rauschenberg , which lasted until the 1960s and ended very unhappily.
Although not artistically, through Rauschenberg, Johns moved in the artistic avant -garde around Merce Cunningham and John Cage , he worked with them and developed his own ideas for art, in Rauschenberg's studio Johns was discovered by gallery owner Leo Castelli .
While Johns and Rauschenberg also removed artistically, the collaboration between Johns and John Cage became rather narrower: in 1963 both founded the "Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts" , now known as "Foundation for Contemporary Arts" .
Johns has had an apartment in New York since then, until 2012 he lived in a rustic 1930s farm house with a glass studio in the city of Stony Point 65 kilometers north of the Center of the New York City.
In 1961, when a retrospective exhibition of his works at the Columbia Museum of Art was in South Carolina (and his relationship with Rauschenberg was already crumbling), Johns bought a house in Edisto Beach, South Carolina, in which he retired for months and in which some of his work was created.
Johns also has a house on the island of Saint Martin (Caribbean). Johns had already started regularly in the late 1960s to visit the island regularly, in 1972 he bought a property there. On that of the architect Philip Johnson (1953 Rockefeller Sculpture Garden Momart, New York City, 1958 Sagram Building New York with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, 1964 New York State Theater, today David H. Koch Theater, 1966-1968 Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 1980–1984 AT & T Headquarters, New York today: Sony-Tower, 1986 Lipstick Building New York and 1994–1997 Philip-Johnson-Haus at Checkpoint Charlie Berlin, UA) has set a long white rectangular house with three separate sections, of which little pictures seem to exist.
In 1994, a property in Sharon, Connecticut, was added, in which Johns spends the time in which he is not on St. Martin.
Jasper Johns at a glance
Jasper John's artistic training
As I said, Jasper Johns had already started drawing and painting as a small child, although his environment had actually withheld creative education in this direction. More than amazing for a child under the conditions given at the time; To acquire education in some direction was associated with a lot of effort and/or very expensive, until the studies Johns will not have had many opportunities to learn something about art.
The fact that Johns was able to take an artistic career - he is said to have known at the age of five that he wanted to become an artist - is once alone to owe his instinct and persistence. In the university, however, he then found better conditions than a young person of today who does not come from a rich parents' house - the ideal of the same education for everyone is being sacrificed more and more on the altar of unlimited economic growth, theoretically everyone can still study.
For young people of today who have a different profession than their environment, Jasper John's career and ascent to the world artist is still a very encouraging example. Because today there is the Internet, in which you can not only look at consumption or cat videos, but can learn, learn a lot and learn a lot, from institutions and from knowledgeable people, whose purpose is not the burial of the largest possible assets.
Jasper Johns definitely went to realize his goal immediately after graduating from high school and studied from autumn 1947 to December 1948 at the University of South Carolina in Columbia. Obviously with sufficient talent, after three semesters, his art teachers urged him to go to New York.
Jasper Johns did that at the end of 1948, from January 1949 he completed a semester at the Parsons School of Design . In addition, Johns looked at countless art exhibitions in New York and worked in various occasional jobs.
From May 1951 to the end of 1952 it was the turn of military service, after the basic training in South Carolina (where he also worked in an art gallery) Johns was stationed in Sendai, Japan from 1952 to the end of the Korean War (June 25, 1950-July 27, 1953).
Back in New York, Johns wrote on Hunter College (College at the City University of New York) to study as part of the GI veteran program, but quickly gave up this studies. He began working in a bookstore in New York Uptown, where he met other artists via artists and art historians.
"Three Flags" by Jasper Johns (1958), Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
The right friends make the climb easier
The job in this bookstore and the friendships conveyed should develop a great importance for Johns: Johns friends made friends with Robert Rauschenberg, Rachel Rosenthal and the dancer Merce Cunningham, the friendship with Rauschenberg brought him into the circle around John Cage, who influenced John's art through his ideas.
During this time the search for his own artistic expression, Johns quickly gave up the job in the bookstore in order to be able to devote himself entirely to art.
He now earned a living by assisting Rauschenberg in the window decorations and working as a free window of the window. With good success, Johns and Rauschenberg made the last window decorations for Tiffany.
In 1954 the artist had found his direction, the first of the typical motifs that are now connected to the artist Jasper Johns: 'Targets' , American flags, maps, pictures with numbers, words and letters:
Everyone knows them - the most important works by Jasper Johns
Jasper Johns in public perception: prices and awards, teaching activities, aftermath
In the article on the art of Jasper Johns you will learn his lively exhibition activity in all important centers of contemporary art, this is about its effect that goes beyond the pure exhibition work:
In 1973 Jasper Johns was admitted to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Johns has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1984.
In 1990 Johns received the "National Medal of Arts" of the USA and was appointed an extraordinary member of the National Academy of Design, in which he became a full member in 1994.
In 1993 Johns received the Praemium Imperial for Painting , a Japanese “World Heritage Prize” to commemorate his sovereignty Prince Tagamatsu, which is awarded annually for outstanding artistic or cultural achievements.
In 2011 Johns was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom , the highest civilian award in the United States. Johns received the medal from Prasident Barack Obama's hand, he was the first artist since 1977 (when Alexander Calder received the honor).
His work has suggested many artists; Especially with the painting technique of encaustic, Johns was even able to give new life a very old technique that continues other artists. Encaustic is an ancient artistic painting technique, with a significantly longer tradition than oil paintingancient Greek .
During the encaustic (from the Greek Enkauston, burned down, after the artists were presented, the materialized thoughts were burned with fire to the painting area), color pigments dissolved in wax are applied to the painting under the paint (formerly with hot fillers, today with electrically heated painting devices) and then burned in.
In late antiquity, the encozying was replaced by other painting techniques , around the 6th century AD, it was completely forgotten until Jasper Johns rediscovered the endlessly durable, incomparable luminos and freshness for his pictures. Internationally important artists such as Fernando Leal Audirac, Robert Geveke, Christine Hahn and Martin Assig followed him and created important works with the use of the encaustic.
Jasper Johns today: seeing, reading, feeling ...
There is a website www.jasper-johns.org that is not operated by Jasper Johns himself, but by an admirer, but has an abundance of interesting information.
On the Jasper-Johns page of the MoMA www.moma.org/ you can view a lot of works by Jasper Johns online.
You can read books by Jasper Johns: Jasper Johns, "Goals for maximum difficulty when determining what happened." , Interviews, statements, sketch book notes, edited by Gregor Stemmrich, translated by Michael Mundhenk. Dresden: Verlag der Kunst, 1997.
And read books about Jasper Johns:
John Yau, "A Thing Among Things: The Art of Jasper Johns", DAP/Distributed Art Publishers, 2008
Barbara Hess, "Jasper Johns. The Business of the Eye.", Taschen, Cologne 2007
Fred Orton, "Figuring Jasper Johns", Books reaction, 1994
Leo Steinberg, "Jasper Johns", New York, George Wittenborn, 1963
You could even read one of the exhibition catalog, which is well known for works such as "Jurassic Park", "Unveil" and "Forgotten World" (Michael Crichton, "Jasper Johns", Whitney/Abrams, 1977) - if you get one in an antiquarian bookshop, it is for a long time "out of print".
Oh yes: At vagarights.com you can have the rights at Vaga Rights (111 Broadway, Suite 1006, New York, NY 10006, USA) if you want to reproduce works by Jasper Johns ...
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